Friday September, 17 - People know you're a tourist when you wear florescent yellow jackets and carry waterbottles on the metro.

So, actually last night didn't end with a blog post. We spent the evening relaxing after dinner, downstairs in the hostel lounge. Erin headed upstairs to take a shower, and went to bed (even though she was SUPPOSED to come back downstairsss). While McKayla was taking a bathroom break, I (Amie) decided to sit down at an adjacent table where 3 Spanish-speaking boys were having beers and playing cards. We got to chatting and I introduced them to McKayla. We played the card game president (culo, in spanish...). They can be summed up as three boys who speak no French at all, and yet decided to study for a semester in Paris. They were staying at our hostel because their classes start Monday and they still don't have a place to live.... Simao (friendly and talkative) was from Portugal originally, but speaks fluent Spanish and decent English. Mauricio (classy and relaxed?) had the best English of the three, and is originally from Columbia, but had studied in Spain and the UK. Their friend Dani, a big jokester, had almost no english at all (except for oh jyeahh babyyyy, and i speaka very good inglish). Their french consisted of "merci" and "nous cherchons un appartment, est-ce que vous pouvez nous aider?" (we're looking for an appartment, can you help us?). We rambled on in 3 languages, translating for each other and trying to play cards. I learned dozens of dirty spanish phrases :) Finally close to 2 AM we got to bed, having made plans to cook them "un desayuno americano" for dinner the next day in exchange for them paying for our meal!!

So that's how our night ended. The next morning Erin and McKayla headed into the city. I, however, wandered around, did the laundry, found a big supermarket, and took a 3 hour nap before they came back at 3. So now they'll tell you about their rather more exciting day!

Friday was a beautful, sunny, crisp, cool, fall morning. We (McKayla and Erin) hit the city in style. We started our day with a lovely workout (30/30 sprints) in the Jardin de Luxembourg (which houses the senate). After the run, we took the metro to the Eiffel Tower, where we had a lot of fun taking touristy, cliche pictures. Check them out . It's amazing how one second we were in the middle of a huge city, surounded by tall buildings, and the next we were staring up at huge, beautiful tower. There were many tourists and people trying to sell us millions of eiffel tower key chains, and we were hungry so we walked towards the Champs Elysees. There, we grabbed a bite to eat, gazed at the Arc de Triomphe, and walked towards the Place de la Concord. We entered the Jardin de Tuileries, which was absolutely beautiful and ends in front of the Louvre. We took lots of pictures and then headed back to the hostel to rest our weary legs. After our siesta we cooked "American Breakfast" for our new Spanish friends: sausage and eggs with onions, peppers, cheese (Edam) and grapes and pineapple on the side. It was delicious!